We recently did an overhaul of the photo section of this website, feeling that the old photo gallery was somewhat unattractive to navigate and cumbersome to upload photos to. The new photo gallery is a mirror of the photo galleries we’ve uploaded to Facebook (thanks to the handy Fotobook plugin). They’ll be much easier to keep up to date, and with some tweaks, should me much more enjoyable to browse.

You can check out photos from our recent outreach to South Africa here.

We’ve also added some thumbnail links to other videos we’ve created in the video section.

We’ll be taking the team to South Africa tomorrow after a few weeks of outreach (mainly in Cork). We’ve had a good time so far working with churches, helping in a cafe and bookstore, feeding the homeless, and doing detached youth work. We enjoyed a bit of a rest over the weekend and were glad to see the ash cloud dispersing.

We’ll fly from Dublin to London to Johannesburg, then to Durban. Our ministry will be in Durban and surrounding villages.

We’ll have very limited internet access until July, so if you need to get in touch with us, be patient! As always, keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter, and we’ll see if we can get updates going this way.

Well, DTS outreach has started. It’s the first full outreach we’ve lead in nearly three years! We’re not exactly nervous, but nerves are there…

I took a van full of boys and bags from Belfast on Wednesday morning while the girls took the train, and we’re now in Cork. In the next couple weeks, we’ll be helping with a couple local ministries, including the Haven – an interdenominational ministry of a coffee shop, bookstore, and prayer room. We’ll also be on the streets busking for money for homeless ministries, praying for people, and leading worship and services in churches.

We’re back in Belfast for a few days mid-May, then we’re off to South Africa for the remainder of the outreach.

Our team will be working with a variety of ministries in the Durban area, primarily helping with discipleship and helping empower people in practical skills. I’ll tell you more about these ministries later…

We certainly appreciate your prayers. We’ll be leading nine trainees from this DTS – four guys and five females; five Americans, one English, one South African Zulu, and one Israeli Arab. They’re a great group with lots of talent.

I hope you’ve been following us on Twitter or Facebook. Otherwise, you might be wondering what’s up.

Well, we’re nearly through this DTS’s lecture phase. We’ve got just a few weeks left before outreach begins at the very end of April. In summary, what’s happened:

• Mike Oman teaching on the Father Heart of God. (also a nice group shot photo here)
• Derek & Trich Dodd teaching on relationships and forgiveness.
• Jonny Clark and Davy Kidd teaching on the Holy Spirit
• Local outreach in Belfast (my small group hosts an evening for elderly people on the Shankill every Monday at Feed Cafe)
• Patricia Green (founder of Rahab ministries) teaching on human trafficking.
• Jon Hatch teaching on the Kingdom of God, and why Jesus is more than just personal salvation.
• The DTS serving at the Western European Leadership Consultation (WELC) in Dublin.
• A week of prayer, outreach during St Patrick’s Day, and learning about how to work in the Catholic world as an ecumenical mission (taught by Rob Clarke, of YWAM’s Kerygma Teams)
• Jonny Clark teaching on reconciliation.
• Alec Cartwright teaching on ‘discipling nations,’ and why missions is something every Christian is called to, no matter what profession.
• Emmanuel Entee, filling in gaps of our curriculum, and teaching on freedom in Christ.
• Next weeks: a week of outreach in Belfast and workshops, then story telling and evangelism, then a week on worship. (Then outreach)

(A heads up: all the photos linked in the bullet points above are taken with a phone camera, and the quality isn’t great)